Announcements

Founded in 1996, MDPI was one of the first fully Open Access publisher. Over 25 years MDPI has grown to become the largest Open Access publisher globally, publishing over 160,000 articles across more than 350 journals in 2020. At the core, MDPI was founded in response to a pressing need of fast publication and inclusion. The scholar was set at the centre of the publication process for the first time. Acting as a service provider, rather than a product provider, MDPI exists to help scientists achive their objective to disseminate research results. At MDPI, we believe scientists deserve a better service from the publishing world.

The International Open Access Week (Open Access Week), founded by the SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) Alliance and student partners in 2008, has been successfully running for 13 years. As an advocate and pioneer of open access publishing, MDPI actively responds to the call of International Open Access Week. This year’s theme of “It Matters How We Open Knowledge: Building Structural Equity” highlights the Recommendation’s call for equitable participation from all authors and readers.

For the last 25 years, MDPI has been committed to disseminating open research. Here is a video showing MDPI’s Commitment to Equity, Inclusion and Diversity for More than 25 Years.

International Open Access Week is an important opportunity to catalyze new conversations, create connections across and between communities that can facilitate this co-design, and advance progress in the building of more equitable foundations for opening knowledge—discussions and actions that need to be continued, year in and year out. MDPI has always aimed to provide professional and efficient publishing services to scholars around the world.

Our mission is to make scientific research accessible to everyone; this year, we interview and hold discussions with open science ambassadors on how to build an equal and inclusive environment for open science. Academic editors help us collaborate with more institutions to advocate for open access ideas.

Read our anniversary blog post: "Sharing 'Collective Human Knowledge': The Benefits of Open Access Publication"

Besides this, our scientific community is a key driver of our success and MDPI’s remarkable growth. Despite the pandemic, we have prepared online conferences and workshops to gather scholars from different communities.

The Basel Sustainable Publishing online forum provides an equal opportunity for stakeholders and researchers from multi-cultural environments to exchange ideas and eliminate barriers to participation.

Conference date: 25 October 2021, online
Conference website: https://bspf2021.sciforum.net/
Main topics: MDPI discusses the current dilemma of open access science from various perspectives such as governments, libraries, and publishers, and related measures on how to change the status quo of discrimination from a global perspective.

We aim to support equality, inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in scholarly communications. We collaborate with universities and key laboratories and have scholarly communications with researchers, teachers, and students on open access workshops.

• 25 October 2021
  Energies journal and Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

• 28 October 2021
  Machines journal and State Key Laboratory of Traction Power, Southwest Jiaotong University

• 29 October 2021
  Processes journal and Beijing Institute of Technology

• 29 October 2021
  Coatings journal and Wuhan University of Technology

MDPI is committed to providing open access and high-quality publishing services for scholars and promoting rapid dissemination of academic achievements. We hope to promote the practices and policies of open access publishing and diversify the dissemination of academic achievements.

We are pleased to announce that two new scholars have recently been appointed as Section Editors-in-Chief for the journal Pharmaceuticals (ISSN 1424-8247).

The following is a short Q&A with the Editor-in-Chief of the “Pharmacology” Section, Prof. Dr. Gary J. Stephens, who provided some opinions regarding the section and the journal. 

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as its Editor-in-Chief?

Pharmaceuticals is a broad-based open access journal that attracts a wide and interested readership. The “Pharmacology” Section is now attracting high-quality submissions which significantly advance the field, making the role of Editor-in-Chief very appealing. 

It is important to build complementary approaches to drug discovery and therapeutic use; papers that reflect drug development in a functional biological context are crucial to the field. This aspect can be uniquely developed in the journal.

3. What does the future of this field of research look like?

Pharmacology research should improve translation into clinically effective drugs. The field is increasingly supplementing the range of small molecules discovered initially with new classes of drugs as well as notable biological drugs, such as vaccines, antibodies, and cell-based therapies, including stem cells and immune system-derived cells. A number of new therapeutic interventions, including peptide and those based on nucleotides, will be important for the future of the pharmacology research field. 

Open access promotes easy sharing and discussion of ideas, making it a vital avenue in the social media age. Thus, it is also important to maintain effective and transparent peer review of open access publications. 

The following is a short Q&A with the Editor-in-Chief of the “Natural Products” Section Dr. Daniela De Vita.

1. What appealed to you about the journal that made you want to take the role as its Editor-in-Chief?

I appreciate our journal because I believe that it is multidisciplinary, dealing with important topics such as medicinal chemistry and related scientific areas. Moreover, I particularly value the quickness of the editorial steps and the awareness of knowing that there are always very helpful staff members who are willing to support and solve problems. Lastly, I strongly believe that our journal minds quality instead of quantity. 

My vision for the journal is for it to grow even more and eventually become a golden standard within pharmaceutical sciences. 

I believe that this field of research has always been of particular importance and that this trend will continue in the future. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the pivotal role of this research area for our own wellbeing. 

Open access allows free access to readers all over the world and facilitates the dissemination of skills and information to the scientific community. Unfortunately, some scientific groups could not have access to this way of publication, thus somehow limiting the publication of interesting data. Therefore, I wish that APC could be lowered in the future in order to guarantee a wider access to a larger number of researchers. 

We wish Prof. Dr. Gary J. Stephens and Dr. Daniela De Vita every success both in their research and in the development of the journal. 

Further details about the Editorial Board can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/pharmaceuticals/editors.

It is our pleasure to welcome 10 new Section Board Members who joined the “Pharmaceutical Technology” Section of Pharmaceuticals (ISSN 1424-8247).

 We wish them every success both in their research and in the development of the journal.

 Further details about the Editorial Board can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/pharmaceuticals/editors.

Rigorous peer-review is the cornerstone of high-quality academic publishing. Over 369,916 scholars served as reviewers for MDPI journals in 2020. We are extremely appreciative of all those who made a contribution to the editorial process in this capacity. At the beginning of every year, journal editorial offices publish a list of all reviewers’ names to express our gratitude. In addition, this year, the MDPI Top Reviewer Award was announced, to recognize the very best reviewers for their expertise and dedication, and their high-quality, and timely review reports. We are pleased to announce the following winners of the 2020 MDPI Top Reviewer Award:

• Adriana Burlea-Schiopoiu;
• Alban Kuriqi;
• Álvaro González-Vila;
• Alessandro Alaimo;
• Alexey Beskopylny;
• Alexander Yu Churyumov;
• Alberto Fernández-Isabel;
• Andrea Mastinu;
• Antonios N. Papadopoulos;
• Anton Rassõlkin;
• Antonio Humberto Hamad Minervino;
• Arkadiusz Matwijczuk;
• Artur Słomka;
• Baojie He;
• Bartłomiej Potaniec;
• Bojan Đurin;
• Camilo Arturo Rodriguez Diaz;
• Carmelo Maria Musarella;
• Chiachung Chen;
• Chiman Kwan;
• Cristian Busu;
• Danil Pimenov;
• Dan-Cristian Dabija;
• Delfín Ortega-Sánchez;
• Demetrio Antonio Zema;
• Denis Butusov;
• Elena Lucchi;
• Gaurab Dutta;
• Livia Anastasiu;
• M. R. Safaei.

For more information about how to become a reviewer of MDPI journals, please see: www.mdpi.com/reviewers.

UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all. In 2020 the SDG Publishers Compact was launched, aimed to inspire publishers and accelerate progress to achieve the 17 goals by 2030. Members of the programme are committed to support the publication of materials that will promote and inspire actions towards SDGs.

MDPI is an eager advocate of SDGs and has already been supporting the programme by creating Special Issues and publishing a series of books on SDGs prior to joining the Compact in 2021. MDPI's Sustainability Foundation initiated the World Sustainability Awards in 2016. We fully support UN's goals to promote sustainable actions that make the world a better place for all and, as part of its commitment, we will focus our actions on SDG10: Reduced Inequalities whilst promoting all 17 SDGs. For more details, please visit the programme’s website: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sdg-publishers-compact/.

Joining this initiative was a unanimous decision. MDPI has in its core values the dissemination of science for all, breaking the wall between research access and under-represented members of the scientific community and the general population. To support this initiative further and continue to support under-represented scientists, MDPI will take a series of actions that will be announced once ready.

The first action MDPI takes is to nominate Dr. Liliane Auwerter as the coordinator of the programme. Dr. Auwerter studied Environmental Process Technology (UTFPR, Brazil), obtained her MSc degree in Water and Environmental Engineering (University of Surrey, UK) and in 2020 completed her PhD in self-healing low-friction materials for water transport (Imperial College London, UK), always focusing on diverse scientific projects that would potentially bring sustainability to industrial processes. As a student in Brazil, she engaged in volunteering activities focused on environmental education and took part in the Millennial Development Goals meetings held at the university.

For more information, please contact:
Dr. Liliane Auwerter
Scientific Officer
liliane.auwerter@mdpi.com

This serves to announce to our valued authors based in Japan that value-added tax, or consumption tax will now be imposed on article processing fees and other service fees for all papers submitted, or resubmitted (assigned new paper IDs), effective from 15 August 2021. The change is in accordance with the Japanese "Act for Partial Revision of the Income Tax Act and Other Acts" (Act No. 9 of 2015), which includes a revision of consumption taxation on cross-border supplies of services such as digital content distribution.

For additional information from the National Tax Agency please see here ("Cross-border supplies of electronic services").

Contact: Setsuko Nishihara, MDPI Tokyo

The 2020 citation metrics have been officially released in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR)!

We are pleased to announce that 85 MDPI journals are included, of which:

• 10 journals received their first impact factor
• 96% of journals increased their impact factor from 2019
• 32 journals (38%) ranked among the top 25% of journals, in at least one category

* Journals given their first Impact Factor in 2021

Source: 2020 Journal Impact Factors, Journal Citation Reports ® (Clarivate, 2021)

We are pleased to announce that two new scholars have been recently appointed as Editorial Board Members for the journal Pharmaceuticals.

 We wish them every success in developing the journal. 

Further details about the Editorial Board can be found at: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/pharmaceuticals/editors

Pharmaceuticals is a peer-reviewed, open access journal of medicinal chemistry and related drug sciences, published monthly online by MDPI. The “Pharmaceutical Technology” Section is devoted to the research of tools that enable the modulation of interactions between drugs or drug candidates and their specific targets. It concerns all technologies and methods related to the development of a pharmaceutical form using natural, semi-synthetic, and synthetic active and auxiliary substances, production in industry, and use in patients.

Currently, the “Pharmaceutical Technology” Section is recruiting Editorial Board Members (EBMs) with research interests in the following areas:

• Drug chemistry;
• Process technology;
• Innovative instrumentation;
• Drug manufacturing;
• Drug analysis;
• Drug production;
• Drug delivery;
• Management and analysis of data;
• Test and quality control;
• Regulatory affairs.

The main responsibilities of the Editorial Board Members are as follows:

• Pre-screening submissions and making decisions on whether a manuscript should be accepted or rejected for processing, as well as suggesting additional reviewers (if necessary);
• Acting as Guest Editor of a Special Issue in your particular field of expertise, or recommending potential topics and Guest Editors;
• Promoting Pharmaceuticals and increasing its visibility at related academic conferences;
• Advising on the journal’s development.

To see the current Editorial Board of Pharmaceuticals, please visit the journal website at https://www.mdpi.com/journal/pharmaceuticals/editors. If you are interested in becoming an Editorial Board Member of Pharmaceuticals, please send your application, including a full academic CV, to the Pharmaceuticals Editorial Office (pharmaceuticals@mdpi.com).

Pharmaceuticals Editorial Office

MDPI Books recently released Book Builder, a new online tool to conveniently arrange, design and produce an eBook from any content published in MDPI journals. Book Builder offers two functions: on the one hand (1) Selections, available to every registered user of MDPI; on the other hand (2) Special Issue Reprints, which can be used exclusively by Guest Editors of Special Issues.

Selections

In just a matter of a few clicks, all users are now able to assemble books from MDPI articles and receive instantaneous feedback in the form of a fully produced and compiled book (PDF), which can be downloaded or ordered as print copy. Selections can include any paper published with MDPI, picking and combining content from different journals and special issues.

This way, the user may for example choose to compile an ebook focusing around a particular topic, or assemble articles from a group of others.

We invite you to make yourself familiar with the new tool! The Book Builder can be found here: https://www.mdpi.com/books/book_builder.

Special Issue Reprints

The Book Builder allows Guest Editors of MDPI journals to create a reprint from a successfully completed Special Issue or Topical Collection in book format. If you are a Guest Editor for an MDPI journal, you can use the new tool  to create an PDF document which includes all articles published in the Special Issue as well as a book cover and table of contents.

For Special Issues containing a minimum of 5 articles, the Guest Editor can request its publication on the MDPI Book platform. Published reprints are assigned an ISBN and DOI.

In addition to the PDF copy of the Reprint Book, as a token of our gratitude, MDPI offers every Guest Editor one (1) complimentary print copy (via print-on-demand). All contributors benefit from a discount on orders of any additional print copies, to share with colleagues or libraries or others.

Why choose MDPI Books?

In line with our organization's values, MDPI Books publishes all content in open access, promoting the exchange of ideas and knowledge in a globalized world. MDPI Books encompasses all the benefits of open access—high availability and visibility, as well as wide and rapid dissemination. MDPI Books are distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License, meaning as an author you retain the copyright for your work. In addition, with MDPI Books you can complement the digital version of your work with a high-quality printed counterpart.

If you are interested in editing a book volume or series, or have a monograph manuscript to be considered for publication, please submit your proposal online and look at our Information for Authors.

Contact: Laura Wagner, MDPI Books Manager (email)